2008/02/25

Is Rogers Park the real murder capital?

Here's what someone had to say about my old neighborhood in the Tribune today:

"You tell people about Rogers Park, and they sometimes think there are corpses on the street."

Does this strike anyone else as bizarre? Sure there's some tough guys hanging out on Morse, and up on Jarvis is a little rough, but I've never thought of Rogers Park as being particularly dangerous, plus there's more condos every time I head up there. Do you think he's talking about zombies?

Anyway, there's a new jazz club opening up in the old Morse Theatre this fall that's probably worth checking out.

5 comments:

That is very bizarre. Based on the wording of the quote, I have to wonder what that guy is telling people about Roger's Park to get such a response. And, why would he say that in an interview about his business anyway?

yeah i guess i forgot about howard. i remember whenever i was at the howard stop while i was in college i thought i'd get shot for sure if i went down to the street. but when i actually lived in rogers park i felt perfectly safe walking around there.

I live on Howard now and don't feel unsafe. Like any neighborhood with people different from you, the best approach is to treat people with open, friendly respect rather than looking at the ground and avoiding eye contact. The only thing that bugs me is the ridiculous lack of street lighting between Ashland and Rogers on Howard, which can feel very dicey late at night; I usually get off at Jarvis in those cases.

When I was in my first years at NU, my rich white dorm-mates all told me I'd be murdered if I stepped off the el at Howard. Part of it is that crime really is lower now, but a lot of it, even back then, was just the stupid alarmism of the over-privileged.

Ira Glass did a Halloween show a few years back that focused on "things that mass culture thinks are terrifying but which aren't in fact that scary". One of the things he chose - totally fairly, in my opinion - was young black men.

sure you can say that, but consider this person's terrifying run-in with a vicious gang near the evanston movie theater:

"The last time I visited Evanston my two friends and I were accosted by a group of 20 black children that were threatening anyone near the downtown theater. We're not talking about disenfranchised youths, some of them were picked up by their parents in a mini-van down the street while we called the police."

apparently these monsters were "calling everyone in the area a goofy ****". now imagine if you ran into this gang in a few years time, when they had graduated from scaring uptight white people to something really socioopathic, like riding their bikes on the sidewalk or something.